The Shell

“You have had her for three hours, Avery,” Lord Voldemort said casually, his wand resting lightly atop his fingers. The man cowering at his feet said nothing, but hunched in on himself slightly more. “You have never had trouble in drawing information before.”

“My Lord, she is…difficult,” Avery stammered, , clutching his hands behind his head. “She acts as though she cannot feel the Cruciatus-”

“Cannot feel it?” Voldemort interrupted softly, and Avery fell silent. “Everyone feels the Cruciatus, Avery…unless your will to cast it has been compromised?”

“My Lord, never!” Avery protested in a squawking voice. “I remain your loyal servant, my wand always prepared to-”

“That will do,” Voldemort said. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Has she learned some protection from Cruciatus, then? I had thought that impossible…” Avery didn’t respond, and Voldemort prodded him impatiently with a toe. “Answer me, Avery.”

“She- she seems to recognize when it is cast, Lord,” Avery said quickly. “But she shows no signs of pain, as if- as if the Curse has a different effect on her.”

“Well, and that is interesting,” Voldemort replied, curious despite himself. “She is still in the cell?” Avery nodded. “Take me to her.”

Avery scrambled to his feet and hurried out of the room, Voldemort trailing easily behind. They walked without speaking through several dark, damp corridors until reaching a room which another Death Eater, anonymous in his cloak and hood, stood guarding. “The Dark Lord wishes to see the prisoner,” Avery said.

The other Death Eater scrambled to comply, and Voldemort could tell by the clumsiness of his movements it was Crabbe; there was little Crabbe proved useful for, these days, besides standing guard.

Voldemort glided into the room the moment the door was open, closely followed by Avery and Crabbe. The prisoner lifted her head when he entered and nodded slightly – not as an acknowledgment of their presence, but more as if something she’d expected to happen, was. Voldemort noticed a purpling bruise on her cheek. “That bruise was not there when she arrived,” he said casually to Avery.

“N-no, my Lord,” Avery said wretchedly. “I grew frustrated, and- and I struck her.”

“I see.” Voldemort stepped closer to the girl. “My Death Eaters tell me you are proving more reticent than most, girl,” Voldemort said silkily.

“Well you did murder my father,” the girl said calmly, as though it were obvious. “I certainly have no intention of helping you.”

“Intent and deed are often far distant from one another,” Voldemort responded with a slight smirk, and raised his wand. “Legilimens!”

But where he could pluck the thoughts of a sad day thirty years earlier from the mind of any of his Death Eaters, most of them skilled wizards, in front of the girl’s mind was an impenetrable wall, barring even emotion from reaching him. Such Occlumency he’d seen only from two people; himself, and the old man. The old dead man. “Such focus is unparalleled,” he said, impressed in spite of himself. “How have you managed this?”

“Managed what?” the girl asked, seeming genuinely puzzled. “I don’t want you hearing my thoughts, so I said no, and you can’t.”

Voldemort sneered. Such a simplistic explanation was far below anyone capable of such magic: she was mocking him. Without having to think his wand raised again, and he snapped out “Crucio!”

She sat there. She simply sat there, blinking benignly at him. Every sense, every muscles and bone assured him that the Cruciatus Curse was attacking every nerve in her body, but she gave no indication beyond a slightly furrowed brow; as though she was working through a mildly complicated Arithmancy problem instead of throwing off an Unforgivable Curse from the wand of the Dark Lord. Feeling more dumbfounded than he let on, Voldemort tried several other painful Curses and Hexes, and received the same lack of reaction. Finally he let his wand lower, and she glanced up at his eyes; a tiny smile was at the corner of her lips, as if asking politely Yes? Can I help you with something? “How?” Voldemort asked, his voice betraying his complete shock.

“It’s just concentration,” she said dismissively, as if it were nothing. “I suspect you’ll be seeing it a lot more from our side.” She inhaled deeply. “You smell somewhat odd, you know. Rather like sulfur. And I know a good manicure Charm if you’d like,” she added helpfully, pointing at his claw-like nails.

Furiously, Voldemort swooped down and snared the girl around the throat; she still didn’t react despite his fingers tightening, not even to attempt raising her arms within the heavy shackles. “You are going to die,” he snarled at her, turning her head this way and that as if to decide which side of her neck to sink his teeth into. “Your body shall be charred away, like your worthless traitorous father’s was. He chose to speak against me by aiding the Potter boy, by printing his fable in the rag he called a paper. He brought you here; remember that as your ashes join his.”

“Oh, he didn’t bring me here; one of your Death Eaters did,” the girl said – a bit hoarsely since Voldemort’s fingers were still around her neck. “And Harry’s a nice boy; I’m happy he’s going to beat you.”

Voldemort threw the girl to the ground with a growl. “Some would give you a last chance to spare yourself agony,” he murmured. “I will grant you no such mercy.” He turned to Avery and Crabbe, who shrank back from his furious glare. “Break her,” he ordered. “Any way you can. Nothing need survive but her memories and her tongue.” And he swept out of the room, his cloaks and darkness close by at his heels.

They began with the way most men try to break women. Many Death Eaters took their turn with her; perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty. Avery was first and so took her virginity, and laughed as the blood seeped out around his penis as it did from her wrists, rubbed raw from the manacles suspending her in the air. Each Death Eater violated her in a different way, some in her anus, some her mouth, sometimes together, in twos and threes and even fours when they could fit. She bled from her quim and her anus and even her mouth, her lips chapped raw. And at the end of a week in which she’d had no sustenance other than come, she hadn’t said a single solitary word, hadn’t uttered even a single cry or moan of pain.

So they turned to more conventional methods. Her toes were broken, one at a time; then her fingers. Her right shoulder was dislocated, then replaced, then dislocated again, over and over, for hours. A whip soaked in lemon juice and feces was taken to her back, her breasts, her arse and even directly to her quim. Superheated wands were used to burn her inside and out. Then she spoke, finally, her first words in over a week; “I’m a bit parched. Could I have a drink of water, please?”

She was given only further torture; knives were employed, and thumbscrews and other muggle inventions no Death Eater ever believed they would need to try. But nothing drew from her one hint of pain, one touch or breath of anguish, as though her body was so detached from her mind they were not the same person. And her mental wall remained untouchable, so that no mental torture could be attempted; she even smiled, faintly, when they tried.

Her body was not far from the charred husk he’d promised when Voldemort returned to her. He gazed down at what could barely be called a body any more with bemusement and mild frustration. “And she never spoke, or cried out?”

“No, Lord,” Avery whimpered, awaiting the certainty of Voldemort’s wrath. “I-I thought surely, when we rent her eyes…it’s as though her mind doesn’t acknowledge…anything bad. We attempted to breach her mind to make her feel, but-”

“But she blocks you out even still,” Voldemort finished, something like respect lingering on the edge of his consciousness. He sighed. “A month has passed now. Her friends search for her, and they grow too close to this location, hounds that they are; we must abandon it. If she will not provide information, she can serve no other purpose but a warning. We shall leave what remains of her here.” He smiled at the shocked expression Avery wore. “What remains shall gain our enemies nothing but grief,” he added silkily.

Then, on the edge of Voldemort’s hearing, a faint voice murmured. “What was that?” he said sharply, turning his head, but realized Avery hadn’t heard, his hearing not being so clear as Voldemort’s. And then it came again, loud enough for the assembled Death Eaters to gasp in outrage and fear: the girl had muttered “Voldemort…”

Voldemort sank down beside the girl and murmured cajolingly, “You wish some last confession, girl? An absolving of all your sins? I am a Lord, and may yet spare you the final curtain, if your tongue should just loosen a jot…”

Amazingly, the girl managed to raise her head, and despite having nothing left with which to see, turned her face straight at Voldemort. Her lips opened and the whisper came again, so softly that even Voldemort, crouched right beside her, barely heard: “Harry Potter is going to kill you.”

Her hint of a voice carried the future as a note in history. The statement wasn’t confidence, nor babbling or bravado, but a declaration of what was to come, as predetermined and certain as any prophecy. Voldemort stepped back, his eyes wide, and felt a fear he’d thought banished with the death of Dumbledore; he believed her, couldn't help but believe her. Harry Potter is going to kill you. No question – no appeal. That which he feared most would come. Voldemort was going to die.

He raised his wand; for the first time in his unnaturally long life, it shook as his hand fought to steady itself, and a shocked murmur ran through the watching Death Eaters. How had this simple girl born of nothing special done this to him? How, in her surrender and her torment, had she beaten him? He parted twisted lips gone desert-dry, and fumbled for speech with his suddenly too-large tongue. Finally, the familiar words that had long brought him comfort rested upon his mouth; but now those words felt broken and useless. However, there was no other path to take: Harry Potter is going to kill you. And seeing no other option but to again seek a comfort he’d no longer find, he whispered out the words. “Avada Kedavra.”

FIN